I’ve been having existential issues lately. Maybe it’s the coinciding of my birthday and Rosh Hashana, maybe it’s because I’ve now spent a few years in hi-tech, known for it’s sophistic idea of money making people satisfied. Actually, being able to pay my bills and being self-sufficient has made me extremely satisfied. I’m happier than I ever was in my 20s, struggling with bills and successive roommates and a string of dead-end jobs.

But… one moves on in life, with new goals and dreams and now I’m wondering what I’ll do in my 40s. My forties!? I mean, what the hell!? How could that possibly happen? Maybe it’s the natural succession of things, maybe after initially struggling in life it’s actually a great blessing to be able to have time and energy to say: “So what does any of this mean anyways?”

And then sometimes I wonder….am I really making sure I’m leading the type of life I want so that when I die I’ll look back and say, yeah, ok, that was good. I did what I wanted and I’m proud of it all.

It also reminds me of Tuesdays with Morrie, the book I read around this time of year. The professor tells Mitch that when you know you’re dying, you really learn how to live.

I saw this great lecture on Ted and thought it was suitable for Rosh Hashana. It really is so easy to get caught up in the day to day.

Wishing everyone a year of meaning and building a life they are proud of.

After finally spending a reasonable amount of time at a decent workplace with mature adults, I have found that this nevertheless does describe most projects handles by more than one person.

Unless, of course, you work somewhere where they lack certain job descriptions like “programmer” or “analyst,” in which case you take on these tasks. This can be fun, you can learn all sorts of different job skills, and you can eventually become a skilled worker with more value.

But it takes a lot of time and you learn through trial and error.

On the other hand, even with a workforce that included all of the different jobs necessary to implement your project, you’re not gioing to magically get whatever it is you want.

It all started when one afternoon I heard someone pounding on the door downstairs. Really pounding. I have no idea who the neighbors downstairs are, but the pounding was really loud. And suspicious.

So I called out the window to the man talking on his cellphone loudly outside the apartment downstairs.

“Excuse me, what’s going on here?”

“Oh, I’m with the police. Forbidden things are going on downstairs,” this very suspicious man informed me with a creepy smile on his face. He wasn’t dressed in a uniform either.

I was sure he was lying to me. After all, why was he smiling like that? And why wasn’t he dressed in his uniform? I didn’t think to have them show me their badge. That would have been the intelligent thing to do.

So I called my neighbor, a nice Arab boy, and decided to tell him it seemed like someone was breaking in downstairs, would he walk by? He arrived home a few minutes after I tried to reach him, and I explained everything I could and asked if he would just walk by… he told me he would wait for the other neighbor and they would go together.

I went back inside, feeling a bit better. Then I heard glass smashing downstairs. I was really scared, and I rushed to my Arab neighbor, imploring him to go and see what was going on.

He did, and I listened from my window as they said “You. Come inside!”

And I was sure that my neighbor was going to be threatened and killed, and it was all my fault. I started to wonder whether I should go and find him, or make sure the door was extra extra locked.

Then an extremely good-looking man come into the apartment shared area with my neighbor, checked his ID, and barked “And you live here?”

“Yes,” my neighbor replied calmly.

“This is a shared apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And you live in the other one?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

With that, he left us. My neighbor explained to me that it was indeed the police, they are undercover. Next time I can ask them to show me their badge. And something weird is going on downstairs. It’s good that they are here.

Sometimes people talking with others in conversations mention that I am cool.

“Oh, Tamar, tell her I say hi. She’s cool.” This from a guy I went to ulpan with who I don’t remember really ever talking with directly. But I would classify him as cool. Went to the IDF, married a French girl, probably was in a fraternity of some sort in university back in the states (he looked the type). Cool.

But I’m not cool.

I have a friend from childhood who is extremely intelligent. In college, she dated the valedictorian of Princeton. Yes, that’s right, not just any guy who went to Princeton. The valedictorian of Princeton. (She went to Princeton too, by the way. Otherwise it would be even weirder). She has qualified me as cool to my face. Also as smart actually, but let’s keep focused.

I have a new bohemian friend who is big into the alternative music scene here in Tel Aviv. He is cool. His friends are cool. They smoke cigarettes, engage in substance abuse, go to raves. The girls wear black nail polish and both guys and girls have tattoos.

That’s cool.

The cool people in high school knew the words to all of the new songs that came out. They kept track of the bands, they knew ridiculous and not-so-ridiculous stuff about the lead guitarists, drummers, and vocalists of the bands. They went to rock concerts and rode skateboards. They were very popular with the opposite sex.

They also had watched approximately 1 jillion more movies than I had by the age of sixteen, and can to this day oust me of almost all information on movies we grew up on. Well, that they grew up on, because obviously I was doing something else.

So I never really thought of myself as cool. Even now, well after high school. I think a lot of your self-image perceptions come from that era of your life, which is quite unfortunate.

My new friend wanted to put the first picture of me in his phone to identify me when I call him. I vetoed that picture. I’m sweet and nice, and all, but not cool. The second one of me is cool. I convinced him to put the second picture into his phone to identify me.
At first he said he didn’t like it. That I was sticking my tongue out every time he’d pick up the phone.

But then he said it was growing one him. It had sass.

“You should embrace this version of yourself more. Because you’re cool.”

“I think it shows me just not caring about what everyone thinks.”

“Yes, that’s what cool is. Cool is not caring what other people think.”

Q: So… do you cook?
A: Yes, I make five-course meals occasionally since I host Shabbat meals. But you’ll never be invited to them since you asked me this question.

Q: Do you drink?
A: Not enough for you to get excited about.

Q: How old are you?
A: I’m 31. I would imagine that if you asked this question you are only looking for a woman your age or younger. Probably if they are your age it MIGHT be ok. If for some reason you DO want to date me despite an age difference, this is some sort of bizarre credit to your character, without you doing much of anything else.

Q: You’re very athletic, aren’t you?
A: I used to be more. Now that I’m older my body is slowly deteriorating. That’s why we should get married really fast!

Q: You keep healthy and fit, right?
A: Of course! But as soon as we’re together I plan to get really really FAT.

Q: Do you parents help you financially?
A: Yes, I’m a loaded American.

Q: Do you believe in equality between the sexes?
A: Are you talking about the bill? Absolutely not. (Ok, I did answer this way recently).

Q: Do you want to come to my apartment/go to a movie/go out again?
A: You already asked me enough questions, and that was your limit for the night.

Well, besides the obvious of looking for work, which gets old and frustrating, but yeah, I need to do that more…
1) I bought a bike
2) I go to the gym
3) I see my friends and go to parties
4) I bought some really nice dresses and boots
5) I learned how to illegally download movies, tv shows and books
6) cleaning my apartment and throwing stuff out that I haven’t been using in a few years
7) and finding my MS Office 7 English Language pack – I got it for 50 NIS as a teacher, thank goodness I found that one….
8) and finding the cockroach that crawled under the sofa and was no where to be found, he crawled into one of the boxes I’d been meaning to go through since, oh, summer
9) buying stuff for the apartment – like hooks, new burners, and seat covers – I have much more room in the kitchen now
10) borrowing books and not quite reading them yet

And yes, I’m unemployed but when you see a nice dress sometimes you have to buy it. When I need the dress I won’t be able to find it, see?

Wait, the list continues:
11) moving my blog to wordpress and not quite getting to blocking all the private stuff – which isn’t really so private, trying to SEO this site and sending my CV to places, so this list will have to continue later…
12) being on social media! Posting pictures of fat cats on facebook and on my blog. Opening a twitter account! Yay! Stuff I’d been meaning to do but when your job sucks the energy out of you you just say you’ll do it when….